1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer software, and in particular to a method and apparatus for a file format for storing spreadsheets compactly.
Portions of the disclosure of this patent document contain material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office file or records, but otherwise reserves all rights whatsoever.
2. Background Art
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are small hand-held computers that perform numerous tasks and functions. PDAs are versatile devices that users carry and operate almost anywhere. Despite all of their advantages, a major limitation of PDAs is that they possess a limited amount of computer memory. Therefore, when users want to use memory intensive applications, such as a spreadsheet program, they encounter problems.
In addition, many PDA's utilize record based storage for applications and data storage. A record may have a fixed size that is only partially used and therefore wastes potential storage space. In other instances, a record may be used to represent non-data containing elements of an application. Thus, the use of record based storage leads to a number of inefficiencies in storage of spreadsheet files and other memory intensive applications.
Due to PDA memory constraints, sometimes users remove other non-related programs on their PDAs to compensate for memory shortages created by operating PDA spreadsheet applications. Thus, when users remove other non-related programs, it limits the versatility of their PDAs to operate other software applications. These problems and others associated with current PDA systems, relating to storage, display, and performance, are better understood by a more detailed review.